Abstract

Writing a few years before the end of apartheid, Chris van Wyk sets out to explain to his readers how to vote, soaking his words in irony: "The ballot./ This means voting./ There's this big box./ It has a slot./ Ja, like a money box [ . . .]" Today, after twenty years of democracy, David wa Maahlamela feels free to write in his poem "Autobiography" that he will not go to the polls, adding "I refuse to be anyone's spanner or hammer; I enjoy biting the hand that feeds me/ especially when it feeds me poison."